Good news to share

Sisters, Strangers, and Starting Over, the second book in the Quinceañera Club series (July 2010) has been included in the Recommended Reading List for this year's Children's Day/Books Day, El día de los niños/El día de los libros, April 30, 2010. My book is among the Young Adult titles. The Association of Library Service to Children (a division of the American Library Association) assembles the list, along with REFORMA (the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-speaking) and the Association of American Publishers Publishing Latino Voices for America Task Force.

While my book was not originally conceived as a Young Adult novel, I'm honored to be recognized by librarians. They were among the most important people in my early reading and writing life, and I still harbor the idea of going back to school to become a librarian. As if this honor weren't enough, I am equally thrilled to be included with authors like Oscar Hijuelos, Pat Mora, and Carlos Ruiz Safron.

Along with this good news, I received the Latino Books Month Recommended Reading List. That list, I'm pleased to say, includes some friends and colleagues: Amelia Montes (who wrote the introduction to Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton's Who Would Have Thought It?), and John Phillip Santos. Amelia, John Phillip and I are members of the Macondo Writers' Collective. Other notable writers on the adult list include: Reyna Grande, Roberto Bolaño, Jorge Luis Borges, and Helen Thorpe. All this news is "hot off the press." When an active link to a website is available, I'll be sure to post so you can read both the Día and the Latino Books Month lists in their entirety.

Recognition for Sisters.... came earlier when Las Comadres selected it for their September 2010 book club read. I will also participate in their teleconference, which should be interesting. This newspaper writer is not used to being interviewed. I guess there's a first time for everything!

Interview with Vince Lozano at Macondo

My dear friend Vince Lozano posted a lovely interview with me at the Macondo Website. Like Vince, the interview is full of that wry affection so many of us adore in him. He is one of the writers I most admire—doing the work even when it's hard, even when it's not fun, even when it hurts. He and I have talked a lot about the need for the general public to hear the romantic notion of what it means to be a writer. I hate to break it to you, but there is nothing romantic about it. It's work. It's hard work. It has it's rewards from time to time, but ultimately, there is nothing glamorous about it. Another reason why, if you say you want to be a writer, my response is always: "Well, then go do it." People who should be writers are those people who are not much good at anything else. I don't wake up every morning and turn over to talk sweet nothings with my muse. Most of the time, I'm growling for my coffee, trying to keep all the little figments of what's left to be done from overcrowding my head.

Sorry to be so snarky. I am getting ready for presentations to several classes at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (thanks to my good friend y comadre, Amelia Montes--another Macondista and a professor at UNL). The questions are generally the same: How do I get an agent? How fast did you get published? Where should I send my work? My response to those questions is: Is your work done? (Nine times out of ten, the answer is "no.") At which case I snarl: Go do the work. All your attention should be on the work. The rest, while necessary, is not important (to publishers, publicists, agents, to those who want to be famous--it's very important). Writers have—or should have—other things occupying their minds. And if you're a writer—a real writer—I don't have to tell you what that is.

Okay....enough of this bad mood. I'm in a lovely coffee house in Lincoln. The weather is divine and the coffee is piping hot. Getting ready for a small pachanga at my aunt's house. Looking forward to that, mainly because although my aunt is only a few years older than me, whenever she sees me, her hands fly into the air as she exclaims, "My baby!" It makes me cringe and laugh at the same time. Ah, familia!